Farslayer's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Their reluctant host nodded abstractedly in Zoltan’s direction, acknowledging the introduction. Then he turned back to his more important guest. “Call me Gesner, Lady Yambu. May I ask, what is this information that you have?”

  The lady told him briefly of the incidents in the village last night. Meanwhile, not waiting for any further invitation, she moved on into the great hall, the graybeard moving at her side. Zoltan followed. Seen at closer range, the disorder was more evident than ever. And it was older—as if some feasting might have been suddenly interrupted many days ago, and only a minimum of serious housekeeping performed since. Leftover food in dishes had long since dried, and there was a smell in the air of stale drink and garbage. The ashes in the enormous hearth looked utterly cold and dead.

  “And is that all, my lady?” The decrepit looking magician sounded disappointed. “I mean—skirmishes like that are common. Why should you think my master would consider it vital news?”

  Ignoring Gesner’s question, Yambu looked about her and asked him in turn: “Where is your master? You are certainly not the lord of the manor here?”

  A different voice replied, speaking from behind her: “No, he’s not. I—I am here.”

  Turning to a broad stairway that came down at one end of the hall, Zoltan to his surprise saw a somewhat overweight adolescent boy, two or three years younger than himself, dressed in rich clothing but looking nervous and incompetent and frightened.

  At this point two girls, also well dressed, and both somewhat younger than the boy, appeared on the stairs above him. These girls, moving like people who were reluctant to advance but still more frightened of being left behind, edged slowly downward on the stairs, keeping close behind the youth who had spoken.

  And the fat boy continued his own uncertain descent of the stairs. He paused, shortly before reaching the bottom, to repeat his claim, as if he thought it quite natural that his audience should doubt him. “I am Bonar, the chief of Clan Malolo.” At his side he wore a small sword, hung from a belt that did not quite appear to fit.

  Yambu, the experienced diplomat, surveyed the situation, and appeared to be ready to take the young man at his word, at least for now. Addressing him politely, she related again, with more detail, what had happened in the village last night, with emphasis on how the alarm raised by Zoltan had prevented harm. This time she included the visit of the mermaids and their warning.

  The lady’s manner, more than the content of what she said, had a soothing and reassuring effect upon the frightened inmates of the manor. Zoltan got the impression that they were beginning to be willing, perhaps irrationally, to trust her now, that these representatives of the Malolo clan were looking for someone they could trust.

  Before Lady Yambu had finished relating her story, the young people had all completed their descent of the stairs and were surrounding her and Zoltan in the great hall. The two girls, who were Bonar’s sisters as Zoltan had suspected from the first, were named Rose and Violet. Now, while Gesner stood back frowning silently, the three family members bombarded the two visitors with questions.

  What had Yambu and Zoltan seen on the other side of the river? What evidence was there of military activity in that direction? On these points the travelers could be reassuring, at least in a negative sense. They had not traveled on the far bank, and had not seen a living soul over there for several days. Nor had either of them observed anything at all military in that direction, unless last night’s disturbance at the fishing village was to be counted. Zoltan and Yambu now related that story again, and hearing it seemed to reassure their hosts slightly.

  There was a brief silence.

  “What is wrong here?” Yambu asked the young people finally. “It is plain that this house has been engulfed by some crisis. Where are all the older members of this family?”

  The inhabitants of the manor looked at one another. Then Bonar, nervously clenching his white hands together, suddenly blurted out what might have been the beginning of an answer: “We haven’t been out of this house for days. For a good many days. Not since that man came here asking questions.”

  “What man was that?” Yambu inquired patiently.

  “A traveler. Someone of good birth, I’m sure. He called himself Chilperic, and at first we had hopes that he was going to help us. I think he was—I don’t know, a soldier of some kind. He claimed to be some kind of distant relative of ours.” The speaker looked around at his companions as if for confirmation. They nodded vaguely.

  “And what questions did he ask?”

  Bonar and his sisters looked at each other in a silent struggle.

  “But where are your own soldiers?” Zoltan demanded abruptly. Since these people were so worried about something, and since they were supposed to be engaged in a permanent feud with some other clan, it puzzled him all the more that he had not seen a sentry or armed attendant of any kind since his arrival. “Surely you have armed retainers of some kind about?”

  Gesner spoke up quickly. “Of course we do. They are all on watch, at the moment.”

  “Most of them are out on patrol just now,” said Rose, the older sister, speaking simultaneously with the wizard. Rose had fine dark hair, a face that was pleasant if somewhat long, and a figure that Zoltan under less tense conditions might have found distracting. She had come up behind her brother Bonar, and with a gesture that might have been meant as a warning laid her hand upon his arm.

  Zoltan and Yambu exchanged glances.

  Evidently the former queen and skilled diplomatist thought it was best to let the subject of soldiers drop for the time being. She looked at Bonar and said: “Young man, the people in the fishing village mentioned a different name than yours when they spoke to us of the chief of the Malolo.”

  Bonar turned paler than ever. Only the shabby magician responded verbally to the implied question. “Yes,” said Gesner wearily. “Yes, no doubt they did.”

  An awkward silence ensued, as if the inhabitants of the house were on the verge of offering some explanation, but none of them quite dared to try.

  Zoltan decided at last that diplomacy had had its chance, and he might as well attempt a blunt interrogation. “Chief Bonar—is that what we should call you?”

  “It will do.”

  “Then, Chief, you obviously have some serious problem here. Is there some way that we can be of help?”

  “We do need help,” Bonar admitted at last, after having looked again at both his sisters and found none. His pale and pudgy hands were held together in front of him, and he gazed down at them as if wondering how he might be able to get the intertwined fingers apart again. “We’ve had … Well, a terrible thing has happened.”

  “I am not surprised to hear it. Now I invite you to tell us what it was,” said Yambu, in a soft and yet commanding voice.

  After much continued hesitation, the four members of the household, including Gesner, decided to hold a meeting among themselves. Having first remembered to make sure that the front door was securely closed again and locked, they withdrew to another room, with some apologies, leaving Yambu and Zoltan alone. Soon, from the other room, their muffled voices could be heard, rising now and then in argument, as they debated some matter earnestly. Zoltan and Yambu paced about, looking at each other and shrugging their shoulders.

  At length the four, with the air of having come to an agreement, rejoined their visitors in the great hall. Then Bonar, the new chief of the clan, with Gesner at his back, silently motioned Yambu and Zoltan to follow him into an adjoining corridor. There the chief drew a key from inside his shirt and unlocked a door leading to a descending stair.

  Zoltan went down cautiously, a hand on his sword hilt. A few moments later Bonar was escorting him and Yambu into a large vaulted room below-ground level of the huge house. The door of this room too was doubly locked before they entered it, and it was guarded on the outside by a couple of elderly people who glared suspiciously at the intruders, and whom Zoltan had no trouble identifying as faithful old fa
mily retainers. There were a few of the same type back home at High Manor, where he had been born.

  As the group of visitors filed into the vault one of the attendant servants held up a torch, revealing that they were in a windowless chamber almost as large as the great hall above.

  There was a faint perception of magic in the air, and for a moment Zoltan thought that the dozen or so fully clothed people who were lying stretched out on the tables that almost filled the room were all sleeping some enchanted slumber—but only for a moment. Then he realized that all of them were dead.

  Arrayed before the visitors, with some effort at neat arrangement, were eleven corpses—Zoltan quickly took an exact count. If this was a collection of combat casualties, it fit the usual pattern in that young males were in the majority. All the dead were fully clothed adults, all of them laid out on tables, or, in some cases, biers improvised from smaller furniture, chests, and chairs.

  A faintly sweetish aroma hung in the air, along with the impression of simple magic in operation. Zoltan, who was no magician but who had seen more magic in his young life than many people ever saw, suspected strongly that some preservative spell was in action here, and also that the spell was neither very well designed nor very well cast. These bodies were going to have to be buried soon, or otherwise permanently disposed of.

  Judging by the expression on Lady Yambu’s face, and the sidelong look she cast at Gesner, she evidently shared Zoltan’s thoughts. He supposed the wobbly preservative spell was the work of Gesner, who did not exactly give forth an aura of competence.

  Violet, Bonar’s younger sister, had begun sobbing quietly as soon as she entered the room of death. With dull brown hair and a thin body, Violet was plainer than Rose, and also had a fiercer look.

  “What happened?” Lady Yambu asked, turning from the bodies to stare curiously at the young chief of the clan.

  “We fought.” Bonar gestured helplessly at the carnage before him. “It was about a month ago.”

  “Fought whom? Only among yourselves?”

  “Of course not.” The youth’s cheeks reddened and suddenly he looked sullenly angry. “Against the damned Senones. The clan of scoundrels across the river. Our ancient enemies.”

  The lady looked at the crowded tables. “Would it be fair to say that your enemies won that fight?”

  “I think not.” Now the lad’s pride was stung. “We killed as many of them as they of us.”

  “And where did this fight take place?” asked Zoltan, walking now between the rows of tables, looking at first one and then another of the bodies. As he inspected the dead more methodically he realized that each of them had been slain by a single thrust, through the torso, from some broad-bladed weapon. No other wounds of any kind were in evidence on any of the bodies.

  Violet spoke up suddenly. “It happened here, in our house. And also in the stronghold of those scum across the river.”

  Yambu turned to her. “Here and there? I don’t quite—?”

  “Have you ever heard of the magical weapon called Farslayer, or the Sword of Vengeance?” Bonar’s question came out in a bitter monotone, between clenched teeth.

  Zoltan had to make an effort to keep himself from flashing Yambu a sudden, almost triumphant look of understanding. But he kept his eyes on Bonar. “Yes,” he said. “I have heard of it.”

  “Good. Then you will understand. Our two clans, neither leaving its own stronghold, fought the whole battle with that single weapon.” Bonar’s gesture was an aborted movement of one hand, directed toward the tables and their burdens. “My own father lies here, and two of my uncles. And—” For a moment it seemed that the new chief of the Malolo clan might be about to break down and weep.

  Rose, who was now bearing up better than before, took over the job of adding details. She related in a muddled way how, a month ago, the people of this clan and those across the river, each at the time locked into their own fortress, had engaged at long range in an hour or more of terrible slaughter.

  Zoltan nodded. “There’s no doubt about it being Farslayer, then. Of course. And you just kept casting it back and forth…”

  “Yes,” said Bonar. “Yes. I’ll see them all dead yet.”

  “And where is the Sword now?” the Lady Yambu asked.

  “We don’t know,” said Violet. “We haven’t seen it since that night. For a while we thought that our cousin Cosmo had taken it to the enemy. But—many days have passed now, almost a month, and no more of us has been struck down.”

  There was a silence in the room. Everyone was looking thoughtfully at the bodies.

  “Well, if your enemies have the Sword, they are hesitating to use it,” Yambu agreed at last. “But where did it come from on that night of slaughter? Did the enemy have it first, or you?”

  None of the household’s survivors could offer a certain explanation of how the fight had started. But when the Sword struck its first victim in this house, a number of people had been on hand who could recognize the magical weapon for what it was, and explain its dreadfully simple use to the others. Almost immediately everyone had known how to use it to strike back at the enemy.

  “You hold it—so,” Rose was explaining, her two delicate wrists crossed in front of her, small white fingers clenched on an imaginary hilt. “Then you spin around in a kind of dance” And her feet stepped daintily in dainty shoes, performing a demonstration. “Maybe the dance isn’t even necessary, but most did it that way. Some of the people chanted before they threw the Sword: ‘For thy heart, for thy heart…’ and they would name a name—someone on the Senones side, you see.

  “My father and brothers knew all their names over there, they knew just who they wanted to kill the most. And then, when you have chanted and spun the Sword, you just let go.”

  The dainty dance came to an unsteady halt. The small white fingers opened, at the end of the extended wrists. “And then—the Sword would leap from the thrower’s hands, and vanish. Each time I saw it go, it made a splash of color in the air, as pretty as a rainbow. And an ugly little howling sound, like a hurt cat.

  “And then, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, it would always come back—the same way. Over there, they knew all of our names, too.”

  Rose sat down suddenly, rocking gently on a bench, and covered her eyes with her small white hands.

  Violet and Bonar each had a few random details of that night’s battle to add. So the bloody exchange of death at long range had gone on, and long before morning most of the family on each side were dead.

  Zoltan took another walk among the tables, looking and thinking. This corpse must be the survivors’ father, and these two—there was a family resemblance—their dead brothers. The great majority of the dead in this vaulted room were men. But not all. Evidently there had been more than one woman living in this manor who had made herself deeply hated across the water.

  One, at least, of the trestled bodies was wearing a heavy steel breastplate. Probably this was the previous clan chief—had he been the first to fall that night, had he put this armor on as a decoration? If the object had been protection, the armor had done him no good, for just over his heart a broad-bladed weapon had punched through as if the steel were so much paper.

  Zoltan, still walking thoughtfully among the tables, gently touched a dead arm chosen randomly. It was as stiff” as wood. Gesner, now moving quietly at his side, informed him that these bodies had been here on these tables since the morning after the slaughter. Ever since then, the surviving family members, all half- demented, had been trying to think of a way to conduct a secret burial or at least a mass cremation, without giving away the extent of the clan’s loss.

  “We’d need help to bury or bum them all, you see. And then outsiders would be certain to find out how many were dead.”

  “The Lady Yambu and I are outsiders.”

  “We must begin to do something. Better to trust complete outsiders like yourselves than—”

  A servant chose that moment to enter the vault, b
ringing a private message for Bonar.

  Bonar, after the man had whispered in his ear, turned to his sisters. “The mercenaries are at the back door. Two of them, anyway, Koszalin and his sergeant.”

  Chapter Six

  Yambu asked: “Mercenaries?”

  Violet spoke up. “Fourteen or fifteen men and their commander, whom we’ve had in our pay since before the slaughter. They’re camped in the woods nearby, and I’m sure they know by now that we’ve been seriously weakened. We’ve been refusing to talk to them. If those blackguards ever find out exactly how much the clan has been reduced, they’ll turn on us and rob us. Then the damned Senones will attack.”

  “It seems to me,” said Zoltan, “that if you and the Senones exchanged blow for blow with Farslayer, as you say, then your enemies can hardly be in any better shape than you are. They’ll have trouble carrying out an attack.”

  Violet glowered. “They were a larger family than us to begin with.”

  Yambu indicated the bodies. “Did I understand you to say that none of these is the man Cosmo, who you say began the fight?”

  The surviving family were uniformly scornful. Bonar said: “No, that coward is not here. When it should have been his turn to use the Sword, he seized it, pulled it out of a dead kinsman’s body, and ran out of the house. He mounted a riding-beast and was gone before we realized what was happening.”

  Talk of Cosmo ended when another one of the old retainers came into the vaulted room to report fearfully that the two mercenaries at the rear door of the house were growing impatient, demanding to be admitted to present their demands.

  Rose was fearful. “Demands? That’s new. What demands will they have now?”

  “I suppose you ought to ask them,” said Yambu. Then she volunteered: “If you like, I will speak to them. I have handled a few rebellious soldiers in my time.”

  The offer was accepted by default; at least none of the family spoke up to reject it out of hand, and none appeared really ready to assume leadership of their own cause. So, with Zoltan at her side, and guided by a servant, the former queen proceeded through the kitchen to deal with the mercenaries. Lady Yambu took her time about getting to the door, while Bonar brought her up to date on the clan’s relationship with their hired soldiers.